Libro/Oggetto: Italian Artists` Books, 1960–Now is a small-format exhibition that will offer viewers a concise history of Italian artistic trends from the 1960s onward by means of a conventionally small-size object: the artists` book. Libro/Oggetto has been conceived as a complement to the exhibition that will be on view concurrently, Combustione: Alberto Burri and America, a survey of approximately forty major works. Libro/Oggetto will feature pieces from Burri’s colleagues and successors, creating a contextual framework for his production. The exhibition is organized by co-curators Giovanna Zamboni Paulis, independent curator of Italian contemporary art, and Randi Malkin Steinberger, a photographer and independent scholar.

The “book-art object” offers a highly varied medium through which one can see the full range of imagery, language and material embraced by its author. In many instances, in fact, the pieces do not conform to the traditional formal structure of books, or paradoxically to any accepted standard of art objects. Libro/Oggetto will highlight works from artists working in movements as varied as Conceptualism, Arte Povera, and the Transavanguardia, and will include work by such artists as Mirella Bentivoglio, Francesco Clemente, Jannis Kounellis, Bruno Munari, Maurizio Nannucci, and Michelangelo Pistoletto.